The Crab Tried to Eat the Moon
Among the fantastic stories told of snakes, water-buffalo, birds, and sharks are several that have obvious meaning. The crab figures in certain of these tales as the cause of the tides. He was an enormous creature and lived in a great hole in the bottom of a distant sea, whence he crawled twice a day, the water pouring into the hollow then, and leaving low water on the coast. When he settled back again the water was forced out and the tide was high. The relation of tides to the moon may have introduced this creature in another aspect as the moon’s enemy and cause of her eclipse, for it is related that one evening a Filipino princess walking on a beach saw with astonishment an island that had never been visible on the sea before. Her emotion was that of alarm when she saw the island approach the shore, and she hid in the shrubbery to watch. Presently she could make out, despite the failing light, that it was no island, but a crab larger than a hundred buffalo. Its goggling eyes were dreadful to see, its mouth was opening fiercely, its claws working as if eager to clutch its prey. The moon arose at the full, making a track of light across the heaving waters, and the crab, facing east, prepared to spring and drag it to its den beneath the ocean. Half a mile away the people of the princess were holding a feast with songs and dances. Would they hear a signal? She placed her conch-shell horn at her lips and blew with all her strength. The monster still gnashed and grasped in expectancy at the sea’s edge, and a breeze brought through the wood a faint sound of drums. Her people had not heard. Again she blew. This time the woods were still. Her people were listening. A third blast followed, and in a few minutes the warriors swarmed upon the beach with knives, swords, and lances. While the princess was explaining to them the moon’s peril the crab made a leap into the air and darkened its face, causing an eclipse, but failing to get a hold it dropped back to the beach again, where the people fell upon it, the princess leading the attack with the war-call of her tribe. As the crab turned to see what had befallen, the princess slashed off his great left claw. With the other it crushed a soldier, but again her cresse fell and the right claw fell likewise. Then a hundred men rushed upon the creature, prodding their spears into joints of his legs and the dividing line between his back plate and belly. Others fell under his great bulk or were gnashed by his iron teeth, but in the end his shell was broken and the moon was safe. And often when the gentle pirate of the Sulus scoured the sea he uttered a prayer before an image of the princess for a bright night and an easy victim, for had it not been for her the crab would have swallowed the moon, and the sea would have been as dark as some kinds of a conscience.